Corps provides for free flow of commerce

The Ouachita River Valley Association and other stakeholders in a fully navigable river have been applying pressure on the Army Corps of Engineers to restore 24-hour service to the locks.

The association’s effort culminated with a letter writing campaign last month from stakeholders to the corps asking that service be restored. About 50 letters were sent by supporters, including Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo and West Monroe Mayor Dave Norris.

The effort paid off. The corps will resume 24-hour service to the most important locks on the Ouachita River navigation system after more than two years of lobbying.

But what clinched the deal were the numbers.

Placid Oil owns the Archie Terminal in Catahoula Parish and the Monroe Terminal in southern Ouachita Parish. The two terminals supply fuel to many retail distributors in central and northeastern Louisiana.

Placid and Tetra Technologies in El Dorado, Arkansas, are the two biggest shippers on the river.

Placid has announced plans to move 250,000 tons through Archie and 450,000 tons through Monroe in 2015, four times what the company has shipped in the past.

And Tetra Technologies moved six times more of its product, calcium chloride, in 2014 than it did when the company opened its El Dorado plant in 2011, Bill Hobgood, ORVA executive director said.

Those increases and more moved the river’s total annual tonnage above the magic 1 million mark in 2014 for the first time since 2011. Commercial lockages also increased 25 percent in 2014 compared to 2013.

Those numbers convinced Col. John Cross, the corps’ Vicksburg District commander, who approved the move. “We listened to our customers and after analyzing the data, we’re going to put our limited resources where they are needed most, and that is the two most southern locks on the Ouachita/Black River system,” Cross said.

That decision will only encourage more traffic on the river. Roger Dobbs of Placid Oil said closed locks cost the company five hours each trip, at $300 an hour, that the company will gain back once the locks return to 24-hour operation late summer or fall.

But it also clears any doubt for prospective users. “It’s hard to convince a company to use the river if it’s not sure whether the navigation system will be operational,” says John Stringer, vice president of the Ouachita River Valley Association and executive director of the Tensas Basin Levee District.

The decision can only be good news, for instance, in the further development of the Greater Ouachita Port.

The guarantee of a fully functioning lock system opening the Ouachita River to commerce with restriction opens the way to significant economic growth up and down the river. We applaud the decision of the corps, but it was hard to argue with the numbers.

The editorials in this column represent the opinions of The News-Star’s editorial board, composed of General Manager and Executive Editor Kathy Spurlock, Business and Politics Reporter Greg Hilburn and Education Reporter Barbara Leader.